(Left) Terry Miles’ driver’s license photo. (Right) Terry Miles’ mugshot after being arrested in Colorado. | Photos: Texas DPS and El Paso County Sheriff’s Office in Colorado Springs
Content note: homicide, kidnapping
This article was originally published in The Examiner on Jan. 4, 2018.
By Eleanor Skelton
Staff Writer
Cell phones in the Houston area lit up Monday, Jan. 1 with an Amber Alert for two missing girls from Round Rock: Luluvioletta Mariposo Bandera-Magret, 7, and Lilianais Victoria Cake Griffith, 14.
The girls were taken by Terry Allen Miles, who was a person of interest in their mother’s death, Round Rock Police said in multiple news releases and press conferences.
The Amber Alert advised the public to look for a gray 2017 Hyundai Accent with Texas license plate number JGH9845.
Surveillance footage of Miles from a gas station in Trinidad, Colorado, was released by Round Rock Police during a press conference Wednesday, Jan. 3, when police announced that the Amber Alert in Texas had been canceled and reissued for southern Colorado.
A resident in Alamosa, Colorado, told The Examiner that they received the Amber Alert for Miles and the girls on their cell phone Wednesday.
Round Rock Police Chief Allen Banks tweeted at 8:58 p.m. Jan. 3, that Miles was taken into custody in Colorado “without incident” and that the two missing girls were safe. Banks previously expressed “huge concern” for the girls based on Miles’ criminal history.
The FBI Special Agent affidavit released Thursday, Jan. 4 explained that Round Rock Police Department received a call to check on Tonya Ellen Bates’ welfare after she did not report to work the morning of Saturday, Dec. 30. Bates was the girls’ mother.
Round Rock Police later found Bates dead at her residence from “apparent blunt force trauma.” Her car, a 2017 Hyundai Accent, was missing.
Miles’ mother told police she received a text message from one of the girls’ cell phones on Dec. 30 at about 1 a.m. saying (sic) “Mom I left with the kids and came home to something bad I think Tonyas boyfriend. I can’t talk now tonya was involved in some bad stuff I will talk to you later when im safe these guys are crazy Mexicans.”
Round Rock Police later tracked location and call log history on that phone in Lubbock, Texas, as well as Clayton and Grenville, New Mexico, indicating that the phone was traveling west on Highway 87 toward I-25, the affidavit said.
Police officers found the other girl’s cell phone in a wooded area near a Round Rock Walmart. Surveillance footage from the Walmart showed Miles purchasing camping equipment and sleeping bags.
The license plate on Bates’ car was captured on an automatic license plate reader near Raton, New Mexico, on Dec. 30 about 12:14 p.m., Clayton Police told the FBI, according to the affidavit.
UPDATE: Terry Miles was sentenced to life in prison in May 2019.
Read the news release from the U.S. District Attorney’s Office here: Round Rock Man Sentenced to Life in Federal Prison for Kidnapping Two Sisters in December 2017 and Federal Sex Offenses Involving a Minor
Eleanor Skelton 